Maya MacGuineas: With a growing debt, a fiscally responsible blueprint is needed to handle the next recession

Maya MacGuineas is president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget and head of the Campaign to Fix the Debt. She recently wrote an opinion piece for The Hill, an excerpt of which is below.

While we don’t know exactly when the next recession will hit, recent warning signs suggest it may be sooner rather than later. And unlike the last recession, we will not be entering this one in good fighting shape.

Prior to the Great Recession, the federal funds rate was 5.25 percent and debt was 35 percent of the economy. That meant the Federal Reserve could cut interest rates by a full 5 percent (in addition to rescuing the financial sector and engaging in quantitative easing) and fiscal authorities could more than double our debt-to-GDP ratio without fear of running low on fiscal space.